Jimmy McGovern has revealed he is thankful he was not raised in Ireland – because he may have become an IRA killer.

The Cracker writer, one of nine children born to Irish Catholic parents in Liverpool, made his admission on the eve of his new BBC show Banished.

McGovern, 65, told Radio Times: “My family’s Irish, but I’m so glad I wasn’t born in Ireland. I would have been ‘involved’. Well no, I might have been too much of a coward. But I would have tried. And how many people are there who killed, for what they thought were real reasons, and who today bitterly regret it?”

Banished, starring Julian Rhind-Tutt, Russell Tovey and MyAnna Buring, tells of the first British convicts given a choice of being sent to Australia rather than hanged in 1787 – often as they stood on the gallows.

McGovern strongly disagrees with capital punishment and said many innocent Irish people would have been executed during the Troubles if it was still available.

He added: “You can always make a mistake. It’s as basic as that.

“How many Irish people would have been wrongfully killed if hanging had been allowed?”

McGovern also told how he supports Julie Walters’ recent claim that working class actors are a dying species and said casting on his next drama about Reg Keys, who stood as an independent anti-war ­candidate against Tony Blair in 2005 after his son was killed in Iraq, is proving tricky.

“That’s a real problem we’ve got in Britain today. I’m constantly looking round for actors who can convincingly portray working class men,” he added. “They’re getting fewer and fewer because it’s only the posh ones who can afford to go into acting. And it affects the kind of British drama that gets made.”